Thursday, March 27, 2014

“Spike Lee at Harvard” starts out clear, slow, methodical,
with a neutral, even cinematic, close up that later zooms out, and builds a
tense lyric trance that sustains restraint and can generate multiple meanings, as
it accrues both narrative and conceptual weight:

At the Grolier…

I got my first glimpse

Of the life of poetry….

And where the life of poetry

First governed me

Toward discipline and surrender.”

This seems like it could be a useful apprenticeship for a
young working class writer, but some questions arise: does poetry require
“discipline and surrender” and, if so, who
(or what) is being surrendered to? In
section two, it becomes clear that he bookstore (like most literary institutions
in America) is segregated: the photo of AI is a metonymy of the tokenism that
is not even as much of a presence as a black dot on the white side of the Tao’s
yin/yang logo. Justified rage bubbles beneath the speaker’s surface as he finds
himself working:

For nothing

But their work

Their likeness

The colorless absence

Of noise between

Images and words….

As publishing, like

The Gulf War, filled

The world with

More ghosts…”

The use of the word “like” here is a powerful simile that is
a fitting rebuke to Poetry magazine’s
claim that Ellis is wasting his time directing his ire against a target as
“small” as the Grolier rather than, say, the Gulf War. For Ellis, the two are
manifestations of the same (one could say “imperialist”) phenomena: the macrocosm
is seen in the microcosm. In this poem (like
many in Skin, Inc.) Ellis thinks globally, but act locally; writing about
what he knows and drawing the lines between the racism he experiences and its
other manifestations.

+++

The 4th joint (or section, or two-page stanza)
contrasts with the portrayal of the “life of poetry” he experienced at The
Grolier in the first three sections. The first (seven line) sentence breathes
life into simple words that have become well-worn clichés contaminated by
over-use (even in much poetry):

In my other life,

I was given an audience,

The keys to darkness,

an office of shadows,

and an editor’s sense

of control over

my own crew of light.”

This “other life,” at first, seems opposite than the
(alienated) labor of The Grolier. Because the literal meaning is left purposely
vague, these images can act primarily as symbols. In contrast to the “audience
for apprenticeship” he’d have to create
(in section one), here an audience is given
to him. “The keys to darkness” tropes on black and white thinking and realities
in both racial and ostensibly non-racial ways; it could even be interpreted as
the power of night, of the essential solitude, that many (white) poets have
praised: a subterranean (if not secret) and extra-terrestrial aerial ballet of
digging, flying—but it’s not simply an image of “internal” personal autonomy.
He’s given what seems a social power,
“an editor’s sense/ of control over/ my own crew of light.”

Even a cursory read of TSE’s short bio reminds us that he is
a photographer who also helped form the (“Coloreds Only”) Darkroom Collective,
both of which these can refer to---if we assume that the speaker is supposed to
be Thomas Sayers Ellis (as opposed to, say, Spike Lee). But the next line of
the poem reminds us that this “lyric monologue” is part of a dialogic narrative
(employing strategies of both ‘memoir’ and ‘argumentative essay’ to transcend
the narrowness of genres).

TSE steps outside the lyric flow in an “aside” providing
voice-over commentary, as Spike Lee often steps outside his cinematic plots as
a comic, but believable, speaker (sit-down; stand-up): a smile and a gaze, an
actor-playwright writing his own lines (or at least some of them)—to deliver a
pleasantly charming jab at “Champions/ of identity politics.” This hooks me
precisely because it pulls the rug
out from under the infinite possibilities of the image (or some would say
‘usurps the critic’s role’), while not quite breaking its spell. Then he drops
the punch-line that grounds, limits, and even ‘locks up’ the image in the
‘prose’ of simple description:

I had an evening job

As a projectionist-security guard

At the Harvard Film Archive,…”

His “other life” is just another job. Increasingly, you had to have at least two during the 1990s,
so it isn’t really the choice it may have seemed (between, say, the ‘white
mask’ of his Grolier role, and the “real” identity). The contrast is between
social roles in contemporary white-run America. As I catch myself having fallen
for the sly brilliance of this poem’s lyric structure, and reading it through
the eyes of a “champion/ of identity politics,” I am reminded that sometimes
(at least in most American creative writing workshops) the image comes first: darkness
is just darkness (just as they taught us in Freud Class that a cigar is
sometimes just a cigar); the keys are just keys; the audience is an actual
audience in a movie theatre. But, in this aside, Ellis is having it both ways,
using poetic ambiguity as a weapon in his aesthetic toolbox to dance both in
and around essentialism (of race and culture) in an attempt to move beyond the
“double consciousness” of which Du Bois and others have written at length.

As this poem (like others in Skin, Inc.) interrogates the tension between words like ‘light’ and
‘dark,’ it’s useful to note that this job as security guard/projectionist
(which is at least 2 jobs in one) is not a night job, but merely “evening job,”
as one becomes guard, entertainer (and even entertained and educated) at his
job. Evening is not dark enough to show a movie unless you’re indoors.

In evening, the walls of the theater create a space for
darkness, and the white lights of the ceiling must be turned off in order for
the colored lights (or even black and whites) to be projected. A champion of
identity politics could say that evening, by definition, isn’t fully dark or
fully light, or even that it’s the most desegregated time of the day (if day is
white supremacy, and night is ‘colored only,’ then evening could be the coming
together, but this job doesn’t even
the score; we need more ‘night’ before that can truly happen; we need, for
instance, to stop ‘day’ -as half of a 24 hour unit- from calling itself the
entire 24 unit).

Segregation is certainly not done away with in section 4: It
is, after all, Harvard, and the architectural designs of Le Corbusier (even his
plans for a more ‘democratic’ Radiant City) have been used to increase
segregation of race and ‘low-income’ people in the names of development and
‘urban planning.’ Both jobs are on the lackey end of the art world, or cultural
superstructure, but the theater at least is a little:

…less restricted

than the Grolier’s marquee-like anthology

where the white people

in the framed photographs

rejected the glamour

of the white people

in movie stills.”

The theater, at least, is more dynamic (just as this second sentence is 20 lines long, full of
jump-cuts and suggestive montage transitions that can be experienced and
analyzed repeatedly). Between the black words working for the white page, and
the ‘crew of light’ working in the dark room, a contrast is felt, but it’s not
the difference between day and night. Still, this life of white movies is at
least a little closer to the soul of this young, gifted and black auteur/author
than the life of white owned poetry institutions. It may even be more poetic than the life of white poetry,
even in its bloody stills. As Ellis
observes the condescension (or defensive snobbery) the white writers have
toward the white actors, he may even find some inter-racial common ground, or
solidarity, with the actors (which in Shakespeare’s time, if not necessarily
Lee’s, were called “shadows”). Ellis thus encourages the cultivation of “true
allies of color” (as he puts it another poem).

After all, the distinction between the so-called “high” (or
“advanced”) art of literature and the
more popular arts of the moving-pictures (to say nothing about music here) is
historically an Upper Class European/American distinction that has trickled
down to the working class. Ellis finds a degree of solidarity with the whites
who do not accept this distinction, who understand that any definition of
poetry that doesn’t include movies (and music), as legitimate, and even
potentially superior forms that give more to the world than they take from
it—is not really poetry (or doesn’t have a hold on craft, as he concludes in
the poem’s section).

++++

In Joint 5, the life of the movie (or the life of poetry in
movies) overtakes the pale white lights of The Grolier: The auteur includes the author, even if you have to
call your joint a stanza (a little room). That doesn’t mean you have to be in
synch with ‘N Sync or other so-called “blue eyed soul.” Despite my blue eyes
(albeit with Eritrean blood and build), I can very much identify with the
economic struggle in these lines:

This is where the soundtrack

would begin if poetry

paid enough for one

and if the public

paid more for poetry.”

These lines bring to the fore the issue of poetic economy
(another “elephant in the room” in this era of ripening cautiousness). I can’t
speak for Ellis, but I know some choose to work in “poetry on the page”
partially because it’s the cheapest art one can make on one’s own. But it’s
only cheaper to make for the same reason it doesn’t pay enough to make a
soundtrack (unless one wants to go all low-fi like, say, Casiotone For The
Painfully Alone”). The kind of soundtrack I imagine here would require more
money (or collective man-and-woman-power) to make—but it could also be more
popular (and thus pay more if we’re working in money).

The Economics here is not merely personal: it’s a poet, and
especially a black poet, fighting for the right to use the fullest of his
talent to create an art that can do at least as much as Spike Lee (just as even
Ezra Pound said that ‘poetry should be as well written as prose,” as
well-performed as a Malcolm X speech, stand-up sermon or James Brown package
show; at least that’s a legitimate goal to be worthy of). I start hearing
Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power,” which Spike Lee used effectively in the
soundtrack for Do The Right Thing. I
also hear many white voices arguing softly (but with a big stick) that this
song is not poetry (often to their peril).

But a close look at these lines reveal how it’s not merely a
matter of poetry paying more, but of who
pays for it, and how it’s paid, and how this can have aesthetic and ethical
consequences. Public Enemy wouldn’t get an NEA Poetry grant (or MacArthur
Genuis award) for the same reason they didn’t need to. Why? Because they are relevant to the public.

Ellis is not suggesting there be more grants, or even
patrons (I almost wrote pardons) to pay writers. Often, they pay more for
poetry on the condition that it isn’t
popular, much less populist. This is
why TSE holds himself to the standard of courage to not accept “any award/ that
helps you and hurts others” (“Ways To Be Black In A Poem”). For the working
class cultural-worker, this choice of lyric genre in a specialized society may
not be ones first choice---but genres, as TSE reminds us in his
“Perform-A-Form” manifesto, are not just specialized; they are segregated, placed into an unequal
economic and cultural relationship. So even these few lines about payment
suggest a way to liberate poetry from the shackles of writing for a genre-patron
(a system that hasn’t really changed since Brecht’s “Song Of The Cut Priced
Poet”)—and help widen the limits of what is called poetry; even as TSE works
within its limits, he redefines its implicit and explicit ethical protocols to
be a more collective act, which can mean more than money. By making the
economics explicit, the poem is free to move on, and become more than that.

If you can’t get a licensing deal from a local worker-owned collective
to do “ad copy,” at least you can do away with the isolating individualism that
prides itself on “kicking the money changes out” (on the page at least) when
it’s more profoundly kicking the cymbals, snares and foot stomping out. You may
have to allow the shape of exchange into the
poem (which, however artfully structured, may be encouraged to become ‘mere notes’
for a performance that could even become an organizational meeting that is part
of a wider poem). So, it’s not really
just about the money, it’s about the music: the movement of the music and the
music of the movement (in the movie about the movie that pretends to be a poem
about poetics—all writing is
implicitly about writing).

This process of “identity repair” here becomes one with a call
for reparations for slavery (as repair is the root of reparations, and Gil
Scott Heron asks “Who’ll Pay Reparations On
My Soul”) So, yes, I do feel swollen by
TSE’s portrayal of an uneven world—swollen beyond catharsis, as he begins to release the tension that was held by the
more restricted and restrained first 3 sections (and, thank you, TSE, for
addressing me as a listener, more than a reader).

The release I feel most in the direct address to the
listener in this final section of “Spike Lee At Harvard” becomes a call to
action, an invitation (or plea) to:

toss a traschcan,

like a lidless metaphor,

through the poem’s

narrative, wild style…”

He’s not asking us to throw a trashcan through the window of
The Grolier per se, but through the poem’s/
narrative. TSE doesn’t mind us throwing stones, either because he’s not
worried about living in a glass house or knows that, if he is, you have every
right, even obligation, to smash it! Though you may not take up that invitation
if you’re afraid of having your own glass walls smashed. Anyway, he can dish it
out because he’s already taken it. The employers at the Grolier may not even
consciously know the stones they have thrown at him (and many others who are
trying to find “African American work” that isn’t slave labor).

The lidless metaphor is more infinite than a more
uneven/unequal simile (the segregation the device “simile” is used to linguistically
effect was explored in “As Segregation, As Us”), and “wild style” can be both
noun and verb! Here Ellis is, in effect, asking us to bring the RIOT in, to let
the poem be wide enough to include the riot. To use a simile: He may use a
language more like Le Roi Jones, but the message and the feeling is more like
Amiri Baraka. Let them call you a bull in a China Shop, or white-owned pizza
parlor, or Iraqi Oil War disguised as another benign “entertaining” book party.
It could be kind of fun to strip away the book from the face and face an
audience of performers who face you until you all face something other, like a
container “whose symbolism/ is unknowingly superior to standard usage---a
brilliant attitude loved by good.” (30).

A riot may sound like anarchy to some, but this is more like
a post-riot disciplined craft, like Spike Lee’s well-organized portrayal of a
riot to admit the necessary rage that isn’t just a B-movie starring Ronald
Reagan, but better A New Reality. Surrendering
to the public rather than the duplicitous white “Judges of Craft” can create something
that would have more power to change things than if he had actually tried to
throw a trashcan through The Grolier’s window—whether from inside or outside.
As “Auteur and author,” the movie TSE is beginning to script here is also pedagogy:
at the very least let more life into your poems; they can be weapons and a
public (if not The Grolier’s more specialized pseudo-public) will applaud (even
‘people who don’t read poetry’).

It’s one thing to see bookstores like The Grolier go down in
shards of glass in the 21st economy (allegedly due to Amazon, and the
increased rents), but it may be their own damn fault for their narrow
definitions of poetry; beyond this, I can’t help but envision the potentials of
a worker-owned collective (that is both book store, movie and music store with
a stage for book parties that are also dance parties that can bring people
together) an energy that it takes more than one—the heroic individualistic
poet—to harness. Thus, the poem (or the well-crafted “Perform-A-Form”) can
continue to pour after its performance. As even The American Poetry Review’s Tony Hoagland noted, the poem becomes
“visionary” and in the best sense of the word, and beyond (before) the word,
and its process of ‘identification.'

Two Songs Released During The Great Crash Of 2008 (or the “height of
Obamamania”): Nas (“America”) and Immortal Technique (“The Third World”)

When looking at the lyric sheet to
Nas’s “America” (released in 2008), I notice a masterful, and subtle, use of
linguistic devices that help make his message clearer. I could write about his
brilliant use of rhyme schemes, but the way he structures his use of personal
pronouns is even more intriguing. Looking at how he uses them can answer such
questions like: who is talking, and whom is he talking to? They can also help clarify
the message of the song that isn’t saying what he might seem to be saying at
first.

In the first verse, he speaks in
the first person singular “I” and only uses the word “you” twice (one time it’s
a “ya”). “I” could refer to the singer, “Nas” himself—but in songs and poems,
“I” is often a character, and in “America,” Nas calls this egotistical (if not
necessarily arrogant) “I” a persona. The word “persona” is not quite the same
as the word “person.” It originally meant a mask used in theatre: one’s public
image, not an authentic identity. So Nas’s use of the word complicates any
simple reading of this verse, but when he spits, “You lucky if you allowed to
witness this/ Savvy mouth,” who is the “You?” It seems like it could be anyone
in this verse—but listen on.

In the choruses, he doesn’t use
the personal pronoun “I” at all, but he does use “you” a lot, as if he’s
talking to “America” (with the help of a soulful female vocalist whose yearning
voice adds a sonic and emotional depth to this rap). But what does he mean by
America; does he mean all of America
or just its government? The next two verses make this clearer.

In the second verse, the first
person singular “I”---the persona that was the subject of the first
verse—almost disappears. The only time “I” appears is when he says:

The hypocrisy is all I can see.

White cop acquitted for murder.

Black cop cop a plea.

That type of shit makes me stop
and think We…”

This “I” is not an actor, but a
witness, an observer, and a thinker. If the first verse’s persona was an actor,
it also made him wonder “How can I not be dead?” But he seems to come more
alive as a witness when he doesn’t use the word “I” so much. He does, however,
use the word “you” more, and the word “us:”

Who gave you the latest dances,
trends, and fashion?

But when it comes to residuals,
they look past us”

This couplet makes it clear who
the “you” is; it is the same as “they.” It is white America, specifically the
white-run corporate economy that controls America. As Nas’s second verse winds
to its close, he moves from the gangsta economy of the American religion and
its Hollywood capitalist (anti-communist) glamour to take a second look at “the
whole race dichotomy,” not as a first person singular “I” but as a first person
plural “us.” And we can speak to them
in the second person plural too (you, or as Nas puts it in “America:” y’all).
You are, they are, the torturer.

In the third verse, Nas speaks of
the torture historically (not just in terms of the black/white “racial
dichotomy” but in solidarity with displaced indigenous peoples):

If I could travel to the 1700s

I’d push a wheelbarrow full of
dynamite

Through your covenant”

In this verse, he uses the word
“I” much more than he did in the second verse, but it’s a blatantly hypothetical “I”—for, just like Ameer
Rahman (in the funny, mordant, and pithy social commentary on “Reverse Racism”
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M),
in reality he is powerless to break this racist covenant (much less to be a
‘reverse racist’). Covenant is a brilliant choice of word because it’s both
political and religious (reinforcing his assertion that the torturer’s God is a
Monopoly Capitalist gangsta). But in this third verse, the “covenant” and its
legacy is portrayed much more graphically; and it’s not just in the past!

When he reminds us that America
was built on “involuntary labor,” Nas brilliantly puns on the double meaning of
“labor” to show how America:

Took a knife split a woman naval

Took her premature baby

Let her man see you rape her”

The rape of women is the same as
the rape of black and indigenous peoples, and it’s all done for cheap,
involuntary, labor. But if Nas can’t go back to the 1700s, this hypothetical
self could theoretically at least:

Sit in on the senate

And tell the whole government

Y’all don’t treat women fair

She read about herself in the
Bible

Believing she the reason sin is
here”

The sexist ideology of the
white-male run Christian church (as opposed to the Black Church) has been used to justify this “involuntary
labor” along with the other forms of racist economic exploitation. By the end
of the song, Nas asks what the so-called “free world” means given all this
brutality. He concludes that this so-called first world nation is much more
like “third world savagery”—and that the only hope is for “the empire to fall;”
a far cry from the “hope” Obama promised during this time (which may help
account for why this album wasn’t as popular as Nas’s previous ones).

Nas doesn’t say how this can
happen, but at least he knows that he has to do much more than “Bugging how I
made it out the hood,” which is what his “persona” (or ‘avatar’) was doing in
the first verse. After listening to the whole song, the first verse can be seen
in a different light (if you were deceived by it the first time).

The “persona” of the first verse
is a kind of white American dream fantasy in
blackface. In fact, as others (like Amiri Baraka) have argued---the reason
why white-run record industries have pushed this image of the
every-man-for-himself heroic individual “man’s man” rapper who has risen from
rags-to-riches (and riches as “salvation”) is precisely to prevent people
(especially black people, but all oppressed people) from (re)organizing as a
first person plural “we” that could have the power to overthrow an empire.

If the white God of America—the
god of snitches and suckers—is really a gangster, then the persona that spoke the first verse isn’t really Nas at all; it’s
the voice of the corporation and not the hood—a “dead” self (just as the free-speaking
“corporate person” is, especially after Citizens United). In this sense,
“America” uses the idiom of gangsta rap (“the language of money”) against
itself, against the enemies who have “created our spokesman” (as Baraka put it)
so that “people pray to the gods of their conquerors” (as Immortal Technique
puts it).

Ultimately, Nas isn’t hating on
himself in this song, but on the persona,
a persona that was created not by him, but by America, “the land of the
thieves.” So, those rappers who glorify the lifestyle are not only deceiving,
but are deceived if they really believe this is who they are and what they want
and need. This image of the rapper is how the white man wants blacks to see
themselves, as the white American (or German) who calls him a gangsta is the
real gangsta. “Gangsta Rap” becomes a form a “involuntary labor,” and one may
try to use it to “pass”---but when it comes down to the real nitty gritty, one
(as “I” or as “we”) will still be subject to a racism however much by the rules
one tries to play.

What Du Bois referred to as “the
gifts of black folk” are by now so thoroughly “woven into the fabric” (even the
soul) of America, but still “they can’t stand us/

Even in white tees, blue jeans,
and red bandannas.”

N

++++

Immortal Technique’s “Third
World,” (also released in 2008), explores many of the same themes as Nas’s
song, but from a different perspective and emphasis, and with a harsher, more
urgent, radical revolutionary tone (“Radical” means rooted; closer to the land;
the suffering land). While gangstas in the hoods of what Nas calls “the land of
the thieves” may be forced to sell crack,
where Immortal Technique is from, they have to grow it (the raw materials for it). Brutality and involuntary slave
labor are even more graphically portrayed in “The Third World” than they are in
“America.” And the chorus is more angry and defiant than Nas’s.

In the second verse, Immortal
Technique also focuses on the sexism and racism of the church, yet he doesn’t
emphasize the sexism as much as Nas does:

I’m from where the Catholic Church
is some racist shit

They helped Europe and America
rape this bitch

The portray white Spaniard Jesus,
whose face is this

But never talk about the black
pope Gelasuis.”

Like Nas, he also speaks of the podrido (rotten) justice system, and
points out (in an intense, righteous, onslaught/overflow of rhymes) how the
Caucasians have made:

Blacks, indigenous peoples, and
Asians

To be racists against themselves

In the place they were raised in

And you kept us caged in

Destroyed our culture and said you
civilized us

Raped our women and when we were
born you despised us

Gentrified us, agent provocateurs
divide us

And crucified every revolutionary
messiah.”

In “America,” Nas would agree with
all of this, as he speaks of all these things and comes to the conclusion that
America is more like “The Third World” than “you think it is” (or at least than
“you” say you think it is), but while Nas just mentions the “assassinations” in
a single word, Immortal Technique
spells it out more, practically rubbing our noses in the horror some may be
trying to ‘forget’ since we can’t really escape it. Compared to Immortal Technique, Nas may use more
subtle craft (including such figurative language as “Lipstick from Marilyn
Monroe/ blew a death kiss to Fidel Castro.”), and adopt the tone of the “G”
persona more (in order to dramatize the temptation to be “racist against”
himself). After all, Nas does come from “America” and did seem himself to
believe, once upon a time, in its god of glamour which isn’t accessible where
Immortal Technique is from.

But the two songs ultimately
complement each other (Nas with his female co-singer; and I.T. with his
Peruvian flute accompaniment); and both end in the same place: with a burning
need to overthrow the empire. After speaking to the oppressor directly (“fuck
your charity medicine”—which can be immunizations as well as bad ‘public
assistance’—or the ‘food drop parachute’ that doesn’t come everyday), Immortal
Technique goes a little further into a specific proposal for how we can begin
the overthrow in our own backyard (even if we don’t ‘have’ one). At the very
least, let’s try to “nationalize the (rap) industry and take it over!” It would
be a start. I wonder if Immortal Technique, Nas and others are joining forces
and working on that as we speak. If they are, I imagine Immortal Technique
would be at least slightly closer to the front-line, but Nas would follow close
behind.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

So, I didn’t watch the academy awards, but I do read facebook
so got some reports. Apparently some guy named Matthew McConaughery, who won
best actor for a movie called DALLAS BUYERS CLUB (in which he portrayed a guy
with AIDS?), gave a very narcissistic self-serving speech. Most people who
mentioned his speech tended to contrast it unfavorably with a speech by Lupito
Nyong’o, who won the best supporting actress for a movie called 12 YEARS A
SLAVE. Her speech was much more generous; evoking the long struggle from which
she came and the hopes of the young to realize their dreams.

In addition, several people posted this particular link from
MSNBC (the allegedly less right wing network): http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/oscars-2014-best-picture-12-years-slave-lupita-nyongo.
This website for instance points out that 12 YEARS A SLAVE is much better than
most of the other movies about race, and the history of slavery in particular,
such as AMISTAD. Serwer claims that this movie confronts the UNCOMFORTABLE
TRUTH of racism in Hollywood. As Adam Serwer puts it:

“Most films that tell stories of people of color are
oftentimes movies about the exceptional white people who ultimately triumph
against evil, and so people of color become vehicles for white redemption. They
are exploited twice over – in history, and again in cinema. What sets 12
Years a Slave apart is that it is utterly uninterested in redeeming
anyone, or in making anyone feel better about slavery. Northup, portrayed by
Chiwetel Ejiofor, and the other enslaved persons remain at the center of the
film from start to finish. The audience never gets an opportunity to avert its
eyes from Northup’s struggle to maintain his sanity and sense of self as he
endures the unimaginable cruelty and desperate loneliness of enslavement. The
moments of friendship, intimacy, loss and terror shared among the enslaved are
paramount.”

So, it sounds like this movie isn’t as ridiculous and white
supremacist as Amistad, and there seems like there might be slow racial
progress starting to happen in Hollywood, but then I found this other article
(thanks Thomas Sayers Ellis) on Facebook written by the John Ridley, the winner
of the Academy Award for the “Best Adapted Screenplay,” for the Best Picture in
12 Years A Slave.

This essay tells you about the way Ridley thinks about race.
He uses the “N” word to refer to any “liberal” African American who dares
disagree with his views (which just so happen to be very similar to the views
of the white supremacist dominant ideology of this country. Here’s the link, so
you can read it for yourself.

One white person sent this link to another white person on
Facebook, and White Person #2 reported it for its offensive use of the “N”
Word, and defriended the person without argument. And, indeed, had a
white person said what John Ridley said, there would be much agreement over it
being racist. However, this indignant white facebook person was more upset by
the mere "N" word in the title and probably didn’t even go so far as
to read Ridley’s criticisms of the black liberation movement in his
essay. It is more important for this white person to have her little feel good
story bout Lupito Nyong’o, than to truly confront the uncomfortable truths that
12 Years A Slave, and the white liberal media, didn’t address, or try to smooth
over. Serwer implies that 12 Years a Slave speaks for all black people
because it was written and directed by black men: “their stories, and the way
they want to tell them.” Judging by many black folks I know, who have read John
Ridley’s comments in the above article, there is still along way to go. In the
meantime, it’s at least important to let people know where Ridley stands on
contemporary issues of racial liberation (which of course Hollywood still likes
to deny is a valid concern).

About Me

7 books of poetry, including Stealer's
Wheel (Hard Press, 1999) and Light As A Fetter (The Argotist UK, 2007). My critical study (with David Rosenthal) of Shakespeare's 12th Night (IDG books)
was published in 2001; more recent prose writings of contemporary media studies
and ethnomusicology have appeared on-line @ Radio Survivor
(http://radiosurvivor.com/2011/06/02/a-history-of-radio-and-content-part-ii-jukeboxes-to-top-40/)
and The Newark Review
(http://web.njit.edu/~newrev/3.0/stroffolino1.html). A recipient of grants from
NYFA & The Fund For Poetry, Stroffolino was Distinguished Poet-in-Residence
at Saint Mary's College from 2001-06, and has since taught at SFAI and Laney
College. As a session musician, Stroffolino worked with Silver Jews, King Khan
& Gris Gris and many others. Always interested in the intersections between
poetry and music, he organized a tribute to Anne Sexton's rock band for The
Poetry Society of America, and joined Greg Ashley to perform the entire Death
Of A Ladies' Man album for Sylvie Simmons' Leonard Cohen biography in 2012.
In 2009, he released, Single-Sided Doubles, an album featuring poems set to
music. In 2016, Boog City published a play:AnTi-GeNtRiFiCaTiOn WaR dRuM rAdIo. Stroffolino currently teaches creative writing and critical thinking at Laney College